


Nightmares

by Archesa



Series: Of sleep, dreams and monsters [2]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Healing, Hordak is sleep-deprived, Hordak will probably have PTSD for the rest of his life, Implied Mind Rape, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Post season 5 canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sharing a Bed, Sharing a Room, Soft Entrapdak, Soft Hordak (She-Ra), Spoilers for Season 5, duh!, soft relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:28:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24661588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Archesa/pseuds/Archesa
Summary: Hordak has never had a good night sleep and it's not about to start now...
Relationships: Entrapta & Hordak (She-Ra), Entrapta/Hordak (She-Ra)
Series: Of sleep, dreams and monsters [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1783108
Comments: 9
Kudos: 100





	Nightmares

**Author's Note:**

> Giving credit to whom it's due : the story was unknowingly inspired by NMZuka's heartbreaking & cute "Nightmare" comic <3  
> https://nmzuka.tumblr.com/post/619241323736809472/comics-have-never-been-my-strong-suit-but-hope#notes  
> https://nmzuka.tumblr.com/post/620588963963584512/hhhhh-finally-part-2-to-this-comic-feel-its
> 
> Go check their stuff, it's fricking great!!

Sleep had never come easy to him.  
Before his fall, his body would just retreat to its pod and shut down while the hive-mind kept on racing through a thousand clones, basking into Horde Prime's eternal glory.  
After that, stranded on a backwater planet in a shadow dimension, cast-away and cloaked from Big Brother's Light, the hostility of his predicament, the frailty of his decaying body, the demanding state of awareness his position as leader of a belligerent army, where strength and cunning were valued above all, imposed him an almost constant wake.  
He barely slept then, and when he did, his mind, disconnected from the constant, indistinct voices of the hive, filled the silence with flashes and burst of vivid sounds and colours, pain and shame, constantly rehearsing the slowly distorting memory of his fall from grace. He had come to convince himself that he used to have a place of honour and prestige, to have his Brother's love and esteem, to be a general in Horde Prime's glorious conquest of the galaxy. The truth his own false memories had twisted to cover was far more painful. He was no one before his fall, just a clone amongst thousand, millions, without volition and without a will. Hordak had come to life only on Etheria. And merely giving himself a name was reason enough to condemn the identity he had forged from the ashes of his once simmering connection to the hive to destruction.  
Once again, he was a clone, nameless, will-less, utterly unimportant, just a piece of a fantastic war-machine set to conquer and destroy the universe. And there was no rest, no respite, no solace in the lull of the thousand voices basking into Horde Prime's Light.  
Light. A flash of a thousand colours, a rain of sparks falling like stars around a solar face.  
Distant, vague, yet poignant and vivid, like the torn fabric of a once beautifully woven dream. But he was not asleep...  
A face, a crystal, and a name. A name Horde Prime would not be able to wipe from his mind.  
Entrapta.  
She who cherrished his imperfection had become the defect in Prime's perfect machinery. A system failure the hive-mind fought a ruthless battle to erase.  
It took every ounce of strength he had to break through Prime's command, to stall the charge aimed to terminate her, to shatter the mirror smooth surface of the hive-mind and emerge, gasping like a drowning man before he turned the canon to the throne and shot.  
“I made a life of my own! I made... a friend.”  
These words echoed ever so clearly in his mind, an anchor that kept him from drifting away, even through his most troubled nights. Even when memories of this fateful moment came troubling his sleep, the fortitude and conviction in which he had spoken these words kept him from ever firing the weapon, sparing him the image of her lifeless body sprawled on the platform at the foot of the throne, a vast charred emptiness where her heart should be. It was a small comfort, but it kept him sane, that even through his darkest nights, the prospect of harming her – killing her – on his own was so reality breaking that his tortured subconscious could not conjure such a vision.  
“I am Hordak! And I defy your will!”  
Some nights, the scene would shift from there, from the moment she slipped out of her restraints – something she could have done at any times but did not, risking everything just out of trust that he could save himself and break free – and ran to him, throwing herself in a tackling hug that left him breathless and wanting to never part from her again.  
But even the most quiet night can be troubled by the cruel break of light.  
In those moments, he came to think that in retrospect a quick death at the point of a canon would be more merciful than what followed.  
Possessions by Horde Prime's were painful, ruthless, and left a searing scar in their wake even after the invasion ceased and the hive-mind recessed. But receiving him, being elected as his chosen – if temporary – vessel was an honour, or so they were taught. The pain and the horror of the violation was forgotten – insignificant! – in the light of such glorious purpose. And the hive-mind was meant to retreat, leaving the body as a mere husk to be inhabited by the purest of them all.  
Freed from the hive, Hordak's mind had not retreated. He had fought, but in the own words of Prime, he was too weak, a defect, most unworthy and most unloved.  
He had witnessed in silent horror his hand grab Entrapta's hair, pull violently at the purple mane, tearing a pained, scared shriek from her, forcing her to witness the destruction of the world she had fought to save, and long before, helped him try and conquer in his fool's errand to earn an ounce of his Big Brother's respect.  
But the twisted reality his mind conjured was far worse. Sometimes, Prime closed his hand around her throat, and crushed her with deliberate slowness. Others it was the sharp edge of the purple crystal he had jealously, secretely kept from the all-seeing Prime that dug in her flesh and cut her life short. Some other times, the most merciful of them all, the universe would simply end in a burst of blazing green flames.  
Tonight was not one of these.  
He broke out of the nightmare, a gasp painfully stuck in his throat, his muscle straining against the sudden effort as he straightened with a start and took in an agonizing moment to recognize his surroundings.  
A strand of purple hair brushed against his hand, soft and warm and reassuring.  
He was safe. They were safe. In Brightmoon. In the spare-room Queen Glimmer had appointed to them for the time being, for however long it would take for the rubble to clear and the dust to settle.  
Weeks had passed and Etheria was recovering a semblance of order under the guidance of the former rebellion, and yet no one had seemed particularly eager to hold a trial for him. For this moment's respite he was grateful. For each second he drew from this life, this blissful void in the back of his mind where the hive used to whisper and that now only held an evergrowing collection of colourful flashes of her.  
He lay back, eyes wide open and breathing sharp as she curled closer to him, her head resting in the crook of his neck, her hand finding its way on his chest where he used to carry the technology she had patched to support him before he – albeit indirectly – almost destroyed the world twice, and a wide section of her hair drapping around his waist to hold him close, and craddle him back to a hopefully dreamless sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Author has fallen hard for Entrapdak and can't get up!  
> Comments are love, comments are life, comments are just down there, please take a moment to stop by :)  
> Part 3 (longer!!) coming soon!


End file.
